19/08/2016

Each week the Romford Recorder has the Steve Allen column. If you're in the Romford area you can buy the newspaper every Friday, or follow @mrstevenallen to see the columns on Twitter. You can also read the archive of past ones, which can be found here.

You can click the image to zoom in on the paper, or read the column below.

I'm starting to see the effects of the Olympics around the area. As I travel into work I notice more people going for a run around Raphael Park. It's even motivated me to stop watching Celebrity Big Brother all day and go for a run. In my mind I look like the athletes in Rio as I put on my trainers and go for it but anyone else out there on the park who see me running must think, “Looks like there's a sale on in the cake shop.”

Motivating people to do more sport is one of the excuses we hear for the money we spend on Olympic sports. London 2012 was meant to get us all in shape. As it turns out its legacy has included a lot more people going to the Olympic stadium in Stratford but mainly just to watch West Ham play while eating a pie.

Part of me wishes London 2012 inspired more people than Rio 2016 will, but that's because I'm competitive. I watched their opening ceremony, saw supermodel Gisele Bundchen was involved and thought, “Well, we had the Queen and people always talk about what she's wearing too.”

There's one health issue that Rio's Olympics will help more with than ours did. Have you seen the red spots on the bodies of some of the Olympians? It's like a polka dot dress for people who only wear speedos. It looks like marks where someone stood a hot drink on the swimmer but forgot to use a coaster.

It's a health treatment called cupping and there are places locally that do it. So I may lie on a table and have some cups put on me and know that I, in some small way, am a bit like an Olympic athlete.